The last time that Jeffrey Groover gave sworn testimony, he got a day pass from federal prison to lecture a U.S. Senate committee on how to stop convicted identity thieves like him from committing crimes.

But the South Florida man apparently paid no heed to his own crime prevention tips that he shared with politicians on Capitol Hill in 2004.

Groover testified again this week – this time in his own defense in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, trying to persuade jurors to find him not guilty of stealing identities and committing bank fraud in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The jurors obviously found his bizarre testimony less compelling than the senators once did — they took just 40 minutes Wednesday to find him guilty of all six federal charges.

They found him guilty of using a Palm Beach woman's identity last year to try to steal $170,000. The complicated scam involved him and others showing up at banks in Sunrise and Delray Beach, opening accounts and lines of credit using a fake driver's license with his photo and the female victim's personal information.

Groover, 53, of Delray Beach, probably won't get another opportunity to use his criminal expertise.

He is already serving five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to making false claims to the IRS in 2012 and trying to cash about $350,000 worth of fraudulent tax refund checks in the names of 50 victims whose identities were stolen.

And he can hardly expect U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas to show him much mercy because Groover committed his most recent crimes last year while he was released on bond after he pleaded guilty to the 2012 tax refund crimes.

The jury's verdict Wednesday means he is now facing up to 20 years in federal prison for each of the four most serious bank fraud charges when he is sentenced in September.

Groover came up with a peculiar defense to the bank fraud charges — half acknowledging his guilt but also trying to elicit sympathy from the jury by claiming that he was a mere pawn in someone else's big conspiracy. He asked them to find him not guilty, despite the physical evidence and his own admissions.

Groover sobbed and dabbed his face with a handkerchief during his hours on the witness stand Tuesday and Wednesday as he told the jury that he had gotten into financial difficulties and resorted to crime to provide for himself and his bride, a Ukrainian citizen he married there and brought to the United States.

Yes, he told the jury, that was indeed him on bank surveillance video and photographs, smiling broadly at bank tellers, opening accounts and trying to cash fraudulent checks.

But, he said, he had played a minor role in the conspiracy and put most of the blame on another man, a former friend and convicted felon by the name of Gus Kloszewski, 54, of Coral Springs.

The two men met in federal prison when Groover was serving four years for stealing $270,000 in 2000 using the identities of several wealthy people. Kloszewski has served time for drug and extortion-related convictions.

After their release, Groover said that Kloszewski "relentlessly" tried to involve him in other crimes.

"Everything from murder to robbery to I don't even know…drug deals," Groover testified.

Groover said he eventually "succumbed" and got involved in the 2012 tax refund crimes but when he got caught, he claimed that Kloszewski kept trying to involve him in more wrongdoing.

Groover claimed Kloszewski told him he needed to make money to support Groover's wife before he was imprisoned and she was left home alone. Kloszewski even threatened to make Groover's wife prostitute herself, Groover testified.

Kloszewski threatened he would "pimp her out so fast…it was more sinister than that," Groover testified.

"This man not only used me but he destroyed my whole life," Groover told the jury, sobbing as he explained that he hasn't seen or heard from his wife for nine months. "I brought her to America to share a good life with her, not give her a nightmare."

There were also several complicated twists to the story he told the jury, including an episode where he tried to help a friend divorce her husband but wound up becoming a suspect in a burglary and home invasion.

He testified that he was at a store copying documents with the friend when he received a series of texts from Kloszewski, informing him that two men were burglarizing her apartment.

Groover testified that he took the woman to her home and searched it but discovered moments later that she was being choked in her bathroom by two mysterious men who he fought off before they fled.

Law enforcement somehow suspected that he might have been involved in the home invasion, he said, though he has not been criminally charged.